THE LABOUR LAWS.
IT is not desirable, even were it possible, that Mr. Cross's Labour Bills should pass during the present Session. The repeal section which Mr. Cross proposes to add to the Con- spiracy and Injury to Property Bill will, if the draftsman has done his work thoroughly, clear the Statute-book of all Acts and parts of Acts relating to breach of the contract of service and to combinations of workmen for trade purposes, except the Criminal Law Amendment Act. The Bill just mentioned determines the extent to which the law of conspiracy is to apply to the latter class of cases ; so that the two Bills, if they pass, will, with the Criminal Law Amendment Act, contain all the law, civil and criminal, which in future will be applicable to trade disputes. It will be, of course, a great advantage to have the whole law on such a subject brought within a moderate compass ; and when we are considering what the law should be, it is a very great advantage to be able to hold easily in mind all that it is proposed to make or leave law. Looking, then, at Mr. Cross's Bills, can they be accepted as forming, with the Criminal Law Amendment Act, a complete and satisfactory Labour code ? We do not think they can, and at any rate, it is proper that this should be very carefully considered. The workmen have found that an Act on this subject once passed— even when there is so much doubt about its provisions that it is thought right to make it a merely temporary enactment—is not easily got rid of or modified ; and the class of employers would find the difficulty of procuring modifications of a labour code in their own interest greater still. It is desirable, too, that what is passed on this subject should have a fair prospect of lasting ; and this it can only have if it offer to both the sets of people interested in it the minimum of ground of complaint. We all, then, need time for consideration, and if it can be said without offence, Mr. Cross needs time for consideration, as well as the rest of us. We unsay nothing of what we said of Mr. Cross's Bills last week. They show admirable good intention, and the law they propose for ordinary breach of contract is unexceptionable. We have no objection even to the continuance of the jurisdiction, concurrently with that of the County Courts, of the Justices in this matter (it being almost impossible to dispense with it) ; though still doubting whether the workmen will take kindly to it, —whether they will be reconciled to a Court which they have had some reason for distrusting, by a statement made in a Statute that it is in future to be regarded in cases of ordinary breach of contract as a purely Civil Court. But the County Court Bill, in which ordinary breach of contract is dealt with, and the Conspiracy and Injury to Property Bill must stand or fall together—were it only because of the connection made between them by the new repeal section—and further consideration of the latter Bill has convinced us that it does not provide for all the cases in which breach of contract should be treated as a crime. Safeguards for the conduct of industrial operations, for fair-play to those who initiate and carry them on, a people like ours cannot afford to neglect ; they serve the interest of the workman in the long-run, as well as that of the employer ; and Mr. Cross has been timid in pro- viding them, or, at any rate, those he has provided do not seem enough for our needs.
It may be said broadly that Mr. Cross proposes no substitute for the Fourteenth Section of the Master and Servant Act, which provided for the infliction of criminal punishment in cases of breach of contract committed under such circumstances as to infer " misconduct of an aggravated character." He has simply run away from the difficult problem which since 1867 has been by authority of Parliament committed to the wisdom of rural squires. It is true that he proposes to punish criminally a single workman employed by a gas or water company which is under obligations to the public, as well as a combination of such workmen, when the probable consequence of a wilful and malicious breach of contract committed must have been known to be the loss to the public of its supply of gas or water. But as regards the single workman, this is almost a ludicrous pro- vision. The gas-works, at any rate, which would be thrown out of gear by the, withdrawal of a single workman must be on the miniature scale,—in which case, the loss of the gas ought scarcely to be treated as a public calamity. And even in the other case where he proposes criminal punishment for
a wilful breach of contract, the offence is one which a single workman would not often have it in his power to commit.
Valuable property, property which could fairly be held to fall under this vague definition, may often be liable to injury through the carelessness of a single workman ; but neglect of duty and breach of contract are not the same thing ; and the breach of contract which exposes valuable property to destruction or injury can scarcely ever be that of a single man. Both the new crimes, in truth, can hardly be committed, except by combinations of workmen ; they cannot be taken as replacing in any appreciable degree the fourteenth section of the Master and Servant Act ; they are among the vestiges of the law of conspiracy which are allowed to remain applicable to trade disputes. We do not, however, blame Mr. Cross for giving up the criminal section of the Master and Servant Act. No doubt there are cases in which a single workman may break his contract in such a way, or under such circumstances, as to deserve punishment ; but it is very difficult to foresee and tabu- late those cases ; and after all, they cannot often in- flict such an amount of injury as the criminal law should, in matters of this sort, be resorted to for preventing. The public may be content to allow breach of contract to be treated as a purely civil wrong, whenever the loss affects only individual sufferers. What is indispensable is that it should be treated as a crime wherever it is of a kind to threaten the stability of our trade—where it wrongfully upsets the calcula- tions upon which trade is carried on, and which are necessary to
its being prosperously carried on ; and can only happen where
it is a result of combination. Our complaint against Mr. Cross is that he has made insufficient provision for the latter case. The gas and water clause is a very proper one, but, strictly speaking, it is a police provision ; and all that Mr. Cross proposes for securing our trade against strikes being unlawfully begun is the punishment of those who go on strike without notice, if by
going away they expose " valuable property " to destruction or serious injury. Workmen, in leaving their work unlawfully, must take care that they don't leave machinery to go to wreck, or the materials of manufacture to go to waste,—that is all. Now against the consequences of a strike the law does not and should not attempt to secure employers, but does it owe them nothing more than has been provided by Mr. Cross ? If workmen, knowing their employer to have heavy contracts, the non-fulfilment of which will expose him to heavy penalties, perhaps ruin him, choose to break their con- tracts with a view to coercing him into giving them higher wages, or doing something else to his disadvantage, is the law to give him nothing but his action of damages against them ? Ought not the protection for which he has stipulated to be ensured to him by means of some really efficient remedy ? We have no doubt it should in this, and also in other cases ; and we have no hesitation in saying that it will be perfectly fair to make criminally punishable any combination made for the breach of a contract, with a view to coercing an employer in any way whatever. The late Commission recommended some- thing like this, and this at least ought to have been proposed by Mr. Cross. It may be said that it will do employers very little good to compel their workmen to give them the stipulated notice; that this only means a short delay, and that the case is too small to be worth providing for. If employers think so, well; but the employers, we should say, do not think so; and it is obvious that a month, or even a fortnight, more of work might often be of great advantage to them. On the other hand, it is no hardship to workmen to hold them in such cases to their contracts ; to say to them,—combine to give notice if you will, but if you combine to strike without giving notice, you commit a treachery which the law will punish. They will still be able to cripple, perhaps to ruin, a trade—to kill the bird in the hope of getting the eggs—by the use of combination which the law allows them. They will retain a means of putting pressure on employers which is only too efficient. They will have no title to complain if the law steps in to forbid them from wrongfully increasing the efficiency of such pressure. We are far from thinking that heavy punish- ments are called for in such cases; on the contrary, we cordially approve of Mr. Cross's proposal that the punishment of trade offences of this sort should not exceed three months' imprisonment.
We have assumed that there are cases in which the breach of contract may, through the circumstances attending it, and especially through the use of combination, properly be made to lose its usual character of a civil wrong, and be treated as a criminal injury. Workmen can never be made to see how an act done in concert by a thousand men can be different from or worse than the same act when done by one person, and perhaps this is not surprising ; but of late their view has re- ceived encouragement from some people who ought to know better. The matter, however, is a very simple one. A breach of contract made in concert by a thousand persons is different in character from a breach of contract by a single person, because it is a breach of contract which a thousand persons have agreed to commit. As to the wrong contemplated, each man of the thousand is thinking, not of the little mischief his own breach of contract would involve, but of the great mischief which the whole thousand can, by breaking their contracts, inflick—and that may be in- definitely more than a thousand times what one man could inflict. There is a difference like that between a slap on the face and a blow with a bludgeon,—between a petty assault and an assault with intent to murder. Then the quality of the act when done by the thousand is different from that of the same act done by one person. A single person, when he breaks his contract, knows that he puts his employer to inconvenience, but he can scarcely flatter himself that the inconvenience will be so great as to put the employer in his power, to make him subject to his will, and obliged to accept terms dictated by him ; in fact, he never does so. But a thousand persons, when they combine to break a contract, either intend to do their employer a great harm, or to coerce him through the fear of suffering great harm into doing something against his will, to his disadvantage, and which will be beneficial to them. There is, in short, with a combination an entirely different motive, and an indefinitely greater risk of mischief arising out of the act done ; and this being so, and the act being an unlawful one, nothing can be plainer than that the Legislature ought to consider whether, though treating it when done by single persons as only a civil wrong, it ought not to provide criminal punishment for it, when committed by a combi-
nation. We have no desire to say unpopular things, but it seems to us that while the rationale of the law of conspiracy as laid down by Judges is in many cases hard to understand, it is perfectly intelligible and perfectly defensible in the case of a combination to commit a breach of contract. And with the punishment limited to three months' imprisonment, there ought to be no hesitation, we think, in maintaining combinations for that purpose among the few combinations for trade purposes which are to retain the criminal stamp.
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